This is a long read and is focused on the spectacular implosion of CNN+, but it covers a lot of WB/HBO/Discovery areas as well.
https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...3DRSS_business
The near-instant collapse of CNN+ amounted to one of the most spectacular media failures in years, a $300 million experiment that ended abruptly with layoffs in the offing and careers in disarray. The corporate tug of war over its fate exposed deep philosophical divides about the future of digital media, as executives struggle to navigate a rapidly changing marketplace in which technology and consumer habits shift day to day.
And it reflected the awkward regulatory dance of two media giants merging even as a high-profile project hurtled toward completion. Discovery had some concerns about CNN+ but was constrained from directly guiding one of its streaming competitors until the deal closed.
Then came an ominous sign. On March 14, two weeks before CNN+ was to start, Gunnar Wiedenfels, Discovery’s chief financial officer, appeared at a Deutsche Bank conference and declared that Discovery+ and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max would be rolled up into a single giant “blowout” mega platform.
Wiedenfels did not mention CNN+. After that conference, Morse asked again if his team could speak with Discovery; for a third time, no such meeting took place.
His concerns were well-founded.
Discovery executives were skeptical of CNN+. Zaslav and his team had experienced bad luck with single-topic streaming services; their niche platforms dedicated to cars, food and golf were costly and ended in failure.
A cable-TV pioneer known in the industry simply as “Zas,” Zaslav had devised the deal that brought together Discovery and Warner Bros., a late-career move that made him one of the most powerful people in media.
Discovery believed in the power of big-tent streaming services, especially given the crowded market. It was also about to assume $55 billion in debt stemming from the merger, and executives needed to find $3 billion in savings.
Despite the skepticism radiating from Discovery, Kilar — who oversaw Zucker’s exit and has a reputation as an iconoclast — did not consider scrapping the start of CNN+. He assumed that Discovery had fully understood when it agreed to the merger that WarnerMedia was readying an ambitious new digital CNN product.
He forged ahead. “It would be hard to overstate how important this moment is for CNN,” he wrote on Twitter on the day the service started.
Zaslav and his team were confounded. Discovery was poised to take over the company within weeks. Why not just delay?
Still, aides to Zaslav admitted one advantage: They would get a look at CNN+’s performance, akin to a movie’s opening-night box office. Maybe once they looked under the hood, CNN+ would exceed their low expectations.
The next day, some unflattering statistics were reported by CNBC and Axios. CNN executives were dismayed. And they grew suspicious of their new superiors from Discovery, believing they had leaked the data to create a pretext to shut down the service.
Supporters of CNN+ lamented that the streaming service was not given much of a chance and argued that the decision was harmful to the CNN brand, a misstep that would leave the network unprepared for a future in which few Americans still watch cable TV.
For the rank-and-file, it was a brutal blow. Commiserating over doughnuts, employees were told by Rebecca Kutler, CNN+’s head of programming, that they were not required to come into the office if they did not have a specific responsibility.
Kasie Hunt, who left a MSNBC job for CNN+, ended her final show Friday with a tribute to her staff. “They left stable jobs; some of them moved across the country; they all took huge risks,” she said. “If you are hiring journalists, they are the best in class.”
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